You know it’s a bad one when they leave the ring. Without the words for it, they waive their right to argue the decision and instead flee to the dressing room, where they can stew, listen to the opinions of others, and gather their own thoughts. Maybe later they will offer these thoughts to the public, but that is only likely to happen once the shock of it has worn off. That will only happen once the dust starts to settle and they have begun to calm down.
In the case of Zach Parker, the British light-heavyweight, there was zero chance he was going to stick around to watch Joshua Buatsi celebrate a victory he felt should have been his last night in Manchester. Too proud for that, and too hurt for that, Parker believed he had done enough to earn a decision win after 10 rounds with Buatsi only to learn at the end of the fight that the three judges watching from ringside had seen something quite different. Rather than credit Parker for his work, two of the three judges voted in favour of Buatsi, by a score of 96-94 (twice), while the other saw the fight as a draw (95-95).
All in all, Parker was left dumbfounded by the decision – confirmation of his second professional loss. So shocked was the 31-year-old, in fact, that he scarpered from the ring, leaving just Buatsi to do interviews in the immediate aftermath and offer the watching audience his interpretation of what had transpired. This Buatsi did in an interview with DAZN, the night’s broadcaster, during which he said: “I must admit it wasn’t my best performance. But what do champions do? They win at all costs.
“I don’t know what style that is,” he said of Parker’s spoiling tactics. “You keep holding and going on the floor. How can you do that and claim you won the fight?”
As for Parker, he was presumably now prowling and simmering in his changing room, where he may or may not have heard the boos during Buatsi’s post-fight interview. He would speak about the fight only when he felt the time was right.
“I’m fuming,” Parker said when the time was right. “I won that fight easy. I think every single person at ringside said I won it. I should be changing my daughter’s life, and the life of my new unborn child. I won almost every round. I outboxed him. He couldn’t even touch me. I should be champion now and going on to bigger fights.
“Everyone’s got eyes, so they can see the fight. He couldn’t even land a f****** clean shot on me. I’m just p***** off. I should be going on to [fight for] bigger titles and bigger money fights. It’s a joke.”
Though Parker, now 26-2 (18 KOs), appeared to have done enough to win, the case for the prosecution was hardly helped by the messy, unsatisfactory nature of the fight. In most rounds Parker and Buatsi did far more missing than landing, and more holding than initiating, and it was difficult in many of these rounds to separate them. Referee Michael Alexander found it difficult to separate them, physically speaking, and the judges, too, were clearly having difficulty deciding which of the two fighters was gaining the upper hand in the fight.
“When he’s pushing me down, what do you want me to do?” asked Parker, who was accused of “flopping” at numerous points during the fight. “I can’t keep lifting him up. He’s 14 stone or whatever. You can’t just keep lifting him up. I’ll waste my energy. If he’s pushing me down, the ref should probably say, ‘Stop pushing him down.’ I wouldn’t keep going down to the floor then. It was a little bit scrappy at times, but if that’s the way you can win a fight… outboxing him, jabbing his head off all night, he couldn’t even catch me with a shot.
“I probably gave him one round and that was early. In the later rounds he couldn’t even catch me. I was comfortable.”
It’s funny, isn’t it, how in the ring a boxer’s sense of comfort can quickly change to discomfort when something unforeseen happens to them. It is often an opponent’s punch that puts them in this sudden state of unease, but occasionally, as we saw last night in Manchester, a similar state of unease can be brought on by the opinion of three men sitting at ringside in suits.
The next morning, Parker felt no better about what had happened. Taking to social media, he wrote: "I can't believe the decision [went] against me last night. Pretty much everyone at ringside and online said I won the fight and won it quite convincingly. I should have that title over my shoulder today and have changed my family's life."
